One Friday in April
A Story of Suicide and Survival
25 April 2023
Description
One of TIME's 100 Must-Read Books of 2021
One of BuzzFeed's Best Books of 2021
One of Vulture's Best Books of 2021
Named one of the Most Anticipated of Books of 2021 by the Los Angeles Times, Literary Hub
As the sun lowered in the sky one Friday afternoon in April 2006, acclaimed author Donald Antrim found himself on the roof of his Brooklyn apartment building, afraid for his life. In this moving memoir, Antrim vividly recounts what led him to the roof and what happened after he came back down: two hospitalisations, weeks of fruitless clinical trials, the terror of submitting to ECT—and the saving call from David Foster Wallace that convinced him to try it—as well as years of fitful recovery and setback.
Through a clear and haunting reckoning with the author’s own story, One Friday in April confronts the limits of our understanding of suicide. Donald Antrim’s personal insights reframe suicide—whether in thought or in action—as an illness in its own right, a unique consequence of trauma and personal isolation, rather than the choice of a depressed person.
A necessary companion to William Styron’s classic Darkness Visible, this profound, insightful work sheds light on the tragedy and mystery of suicide, offering solace that may save lives.
Reviews
"[An] engrossing, necessary book—part memoir, part philosophical treatise... [An] intimate testimony from someone who has lived through an illness long shrouded in silence, shame and sin... Antrim’s inventive, circular prose style reflects his sense of warped time: Hours bend, fragment, compress, extend... One hopes this brief, courageous book will bring us closer to the 'paradigm shift' Antrim seeks." — Heather Clark, New York Times Book Review
"[With] an unflinching portrait of his psychosis, hospitalization and treatment...Antrim aims not only to destigmatize mental illness but also to strip away the hushed-whispers mystery surrounding suicide." — Sandra Sobeiraj Westfall, People Magazine
"In One Friday in April, Donald Antrim describes the sickness that is suicide and the anguish of self-annihilation in crisp, vivid prose that is free of self-pity or self-aggrandizement. The book chronicles his experience at the brink, but it also describes the larger face of how little we really know of suicide and its multiplicity of causes, and how little we understand of our agency over our own lives or deaths. It is a compelling, heart-breaking, and redemptive read and it shimmers in its narratives of both loss and hope." — Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree
"One Friday in April evokes, as vividly as any book since William Styron's Darkness Visible, the ongoing present tenseness—or present tension—of suicide... [Antrim's intentions] are to explore the experience of his illness rather than its arc" — David L Ulin, Los Angeles Times
